Earth
by chimere
Summary: The thoughts and feelings of humans and Cylons, in the order in which they appeared on screen, during the final scene of "Revelations". Written before the second half of season 4 aired.


Disclaimer: everything in Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined series) belongs to Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and the Sci Fi Channel, I'm just borrowing some of it. Not making any money. Don't sue.

* * *

**Earth**

_By chim__è__re_

**Bill**

Why had they never stopped to consider what Earth might be like?

Oh, they had dreamed of forests like on Virgon, fields like on Aerelon, oceans like on Caprica. They had imagined the mountains of Tauron and the rolling hills of Leonis. They had pictured everything they had loved and lost on that mythical planet, Earth. Nothing short of idyllic had never even entered their mind.

And that was just it. They had dreamed, imagined. They had _believed_.

What they hadn't done was _think_.

So easy, so painfully easy to believe in the gods or in one god, in forgiveness for all one's mistakes that erases all the consequences and guilt, in meeting loved ones again after death, in finding a new home for humanity.

Knowledge was the only thing one could build on, while faith was unreliable and, as had just been proven, often dangerous. And if knowledge could not be attained, a healthy amount of skepticism was called for. Bill had always held that to be true.

And yet he had faltered. Love was different, love required trust, which was, in essence, also faith. He trusted the woman he loved; his mistake was in trusting the world by extension, in believing that, just for once, they would get a break from the horror that had been the order of the day for three years. The world should never be trusted. It had a way of crushing hopes.

_Taking ideals and sons and homeworlds and lifelong friends, leaving only the harsh, bitter struggle for mere survival, and now snatching their destination from their grasp and stretching the road ahead interminably into the murk of the unknown, with his only comfort about to slip away from his side..._

This scorched Earth served them right for resting the fate of the entire human race on some centuries-old fiction. On second thought, the prophecies may even have been right - but they had never stated what the Thirteenth Colony would be like. The Thirteenth Tribe may have existed, but they seemed to have destroyed themselves and their home even more efficiently than their twelve siblings. That the Fleet had never considered this possibility was a serious lapse they couldn't afford to repeat.

He threw the bitterly disappointing handful of earth - of _Earth_ - back to the ground in anger.

In the future, if there was to be one, they couldn't afford any more faith.

**Laura**

The chasm of her own foolishness and gullibility opened suddenly before Laura's feet and she felt herself falling into it. And oh, it wasn't just her own gullibility - she had successfully infected the whole Fleet with it. And now she had crushed the very hopes she had so carelessly built - the hopes of almost forty thousand people.

_Laura Roslin, the President of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, the dying leader of the prophecies._ She thought bitterly that instead of this whole dying business she should have just died and rid the people of such faulty leadership.

They would have been better off on Kobol. She felt almost ready to think that they would have been better off on New Caprica.

Bill was already wearing the soldier's face, prepared to continue to fight. Never surrender.

Well, she couldn't either, of course. There was no choice, no chance to throw herself on the ground and howl her pain and anger, there never had been any choice but to struggle on since she had become the President. No matter what, she would think of the people and not break down. No chance for weakness, even if she was reeling, mind and body and soul, from this last blow that was the hardest of all the ones that had been rained on her for three years.

But despite everything that she told herself, she was not sure she could keep standing if he was not standing by her side.

_You made me believe._

How it stabbed her with pain, a guilt and failure much more acute than what she felt for the Fleet. He had given her more strength than he would perhaps ever guess, and she... she had let him down. He had never really believed in Earth, not of his own will - she should have listened to him and not to the whisper of prophecies promising her a glorious role.

At the height of arrogant, self-centred presumption she had imagined herself a saviour. Her humility had been at least partly feigned and it had been too easy to wallow in self-pity for her supposed imminent melodramatic death, and she had known, she had _known_ all of that in her heart, but refused to face it.

She had said the name of this planet and now felt like she could never utter it again. It would hurt too much.

How she wanted to collapse, or at least lean all of her weight on him, but she could do neither. She had brought them to this place and she would have to lead them on, even if she as yet had no idea where. Still, perhaps she could afford one small sign, unnoticed by the others, of the devastation she felt.

She took his hand, blindly, and clung to it, and he returned the press of her fingers with equal desperation, desperation they could never, would never show to the people. Both of them were on the edge of falling, but standing side by side, they held each other up.

**D'Anna**

No. No, this couldn't be true. Not after the beautiful visions granted her. Not after the long journey that had separated them from their family and allied them with their adversaries and yet held a shining promise of its final destination.

Earth.

She had been so sure, so utterly convinced that she was leading her people to a new and better home. She had been so close to her triumph -

But in truth, she had been too late. Earth was already destroyed.

The others - humans and Cylons alike - might be disappointed, disillusioned, angry. But she only felt grief. She mourned.

Her home had been destroyed before she had ever laid eyes on it. _Her home._ For the first time, she thought she understood what the humans felt when they remembered their Twelve Colonies.

It was just as huge a change as knowing true love for the first time, a whole new world of sorrow opening up in her soul.

She felt tears fill her eyes, tears for all the thirteen colonies.

For the first time, she felt sorry.

But when her anger finally came, it was blinding and searing like starfire. This was the humans again, and their horrible, inevitable capability of destruction, a feature so prominent in their nature that they had bestowed much of it onto their children as well. D'Anna certainly felt ready to destroy at this moment.

Why did everything the humans ever built always have to end up in ruins? Why had they done this to Earth and caused all this pain?

Why?

Grief welled again and cooled her rage, but she felt some of it remain, simmering under the surface - resentful anger at the humans of the Fleet, brothers and sisters of those who had destroyed Earth.

**Helo**

He had meant to raise his family here - him and Sharon and Hera and perhaps, if he dared to hope, other children as well.

A family. On Earth. In peace.

Maybe he should have expected it. Nothing had come easy to him since hed fallen in love with a Cylon. But this wasn't just him, it was all of the human race and some of the Cylons as well, and he had been no more prepared for this blow than anyone else.

But in truth, he couldn't despair. Not with Sharon by his side and their daughter waiting back on the Galactica. The possibility that his wife might still be punished somehow for shooting the leader of the Cylons worried Helo a lot more than this barren planet.

He didn't quite realise how lucky he was.

**Sharon**

Sharon looked at Earth and felt cold, in the same non-physical way she had felt when Hera had stood by her bed and said "bye-bye", or when she had looked at her daughter's drawings of the Six. It was a cold of the soul.

She couldn't help feeling that these things were somehow connected, this devastated planet and her daughter's strange destiny that seemed to draw her away from them, no matter how hard she fought against it.

She moved a little bit closer to Helo. She was afraid.

**Sam**

This is what I led them to, with the others. This is what the _feeling_ we had got the Fleet. It looks like that's what we are - guides to destruction.

And why should that surprise me? I'm a Cylon, after all.

Except that I still don't feel like one. I still can't quite believe it.

I keep banging against the insides of my head, trying to get out of my own self, out of my true nature that I didn't ask for and that's robbed me of everything I cared about.

I can feel Tory approaching; I move away.

She wants to be a Cylon. I don't.

I only want Kara.

And she's just what I can't have.

**Tory**

She had turned from one people (_betrayed them,_ whispered the part of her that could still see the shock and pain in Laura Roslin's eyes) to embrace another. She had come to the Cylons to call them her own people, and to call herself one of them. She had been certain that she was doing the right thing - she was a Cylon, what else could she do? But now, she wasn't so sure.

None of the other three seemed to want to follow her. She found herself utterly alone - viewed with barely disguised hatred and distrust by the humans, not yet completely accepted by the Cylons, and shunned by Tigh, Tyrol and Anders. There it was again - she tried to approach Anders with nothing but sharing comfort on her mind, but he walked away. The pain of this rejection was sharp and she blinked back tears.

_He thinks I'm a cold-blooded, calculating Cylon. He still thinks like a human. Those fools all think that Cylons don't feel. Gaius was the only exception._

Fury, the likes of which she had only felt since discovering her true nature, suddenly flooded her. _What right do they have to hate us simply because we're Cylons? It's not as though the Final Five - or the four of us, anyway - participated in the destruction of the Twelve Colonies. We saved hundreds, thousands of them on New Caprica. What have I ever done to them that they should hate me?_

_Cally,_ a voice whispered in her head, and her fury cooled into despair. She hugged herself tightly and stared at the desolate Earth.

She had tried to follow her own nature, to be what she truly was, and had only ended up belonging nowhere. _Maybe they were right when they said that we came from Earth, although I don't remember it. This place looks like a fitting home for me, neither human nor Cylon - no one at all._

**Lee**

This wasn't fair.

Not after a genocide and running for their lives across half the galaxy and almost fifty thousand people being whittled down to less than forty thousand. Not after his father had suffered two near-deadly wounds and the President had made hard decisions while dying from cancer and Duck had blown himself up and all those countless people, soldiers and civilians alike, had given their lives, all in this three-year effort to save humanity.

And it wasn't fair to have such hope and joy snatched away right from their grasp. The jubilant cries echoing in the CIC and, he was sure, across the whole Fleet. His father and the President clasping hands, looking truly happy for the first time Lee had seen them since the attacks. They had succeeded, they had survived, and they had found Earth, only to discover that it couldn't be a home for them.

And Kara, who had died and come back and been willing to die again to lead them here - how triumphant she must have felt, and then it had all turned out to be in vain.

It wasn't fair.

Fairness, justice, doing the right thing had always meant the world to Lee. But although he wouldn't acknowledge it, he knew the bitter fact that justice didn't exist. It was a construct of men's minds - the universe, _life_ didn't practice justice. It was all just blind chance, no plan or balance or meaning to it. He knew that, and wished he didn't.

There was no justice.

But there was still comfort, to be sought and offered. His father was holding the President's hand - or maybe she was holding his - Lee knew that he could not interfere there, the two leaders sharing comfort before they could offer it to the people again. But there was Kara. Lee started to walk, with a purpose now.

Kara, reckless, stubborn, crazy, sexy, driven, enigmatic, beautiful Kara, who had come back from the dead and yet never seemed to really be here since her return.

Lee flinched at the despair on her face.

**Caprica**

_Maybe there is no God._

She had never questioned her faith, never even dreamt such blasphemy. She didn't want to now, either, but couldn't help it. It was becoming harder and harder to see God's benevolence and, most especially, His plan. Where everything had been so clear before, now the future was murky and uncertain.

She had loved Gaius with all her body and heart and soul, and nothing had come of it. They had travelled far to reach their new home, and this was what they had found.

_Why does God allow so much pain?_

Suddenly, she felt her baby inside her, more clearly than she ever had before. Here, on Earth, almost as though the planet was calling to her child. _Life._

She was going to have a child, not with the human she had loved, but with one of the lost Cylons, a man who, although he didn't love her, would stand by her side more steadfastly than Gaius ever could. She, named after the planet she had destroyed, had arrived at Earth and felt its destruction like shards of glass within her heart.

In sudden longing, she walked to her unexpected companion on this journey that had become so uncertain. She felt the baby again. _Our child._

_Forgive me, my Lord - it is so easy to be blinded by pain. I have been given gifts in exchange for what has been taken away from me._

**Gaius**

I have long since ceased to try to see any sense in this. Everything that Six said about the divine plan - well, at some point I even thought I could see it, but no longer.

There is a plan, I do believe that. But God's plan is much too complicated for mortal men to understand, even for one of His tools like me.

I have been a scientist, a traitor, the President's advisor, the Vice President, the President, a prisoner of the Cylons, a prisoner of the humans, and the Chosen One of God. There were the Twelve Colonies, then running for our lives, then New Caprica, then running for our lives again, and now Earth.

_This_ Earth.

I dare anyone to make any sense of it.

And I loved Six, I truly did - well, there were others, too, I know, but I couldn't help it - and I still do. And now she is with that sour one-eyed drunk, and oh yes, he turned out to be a Cylon, one of the Final Five, and I've been having sex with another one of those Five. Or did I ever love the corporeal Six - maybe I only loved the angel? And is she an angel? And on top of it all, Laura Roslin, who hates me with a passion, saved my life, even after finally learning that I betrayed the human race to the Cylons.

Well? I told you, none of this makes any sense.

If there's any pattern to it at all, it's that somehow, I always seem to survive, under any circumstances and against all odds.

I am the Chosen One.

Please, God, show me the way.

I'm the Chosen One, I should know the way.

**Galen**

It was so fitting that he simply had to grin, and could barely keep from laughing out loud. It was like everything else in his life - a huge disappointment. No matter how hard he had tried to be a good man, everything precious had always been taken away from him - Sharon, Cally, his work, his own self. It had all been ruined from the start, and he had never had any choice about any of it, just illusions. No wonder that Earth should turn out to be another one.

_What am I doing here? I should be with Nicky. He's all that's left._

Even he could not contemplate the idea that his son might be taken away from him.

**Saul**

Saul Tigh took the blow stoically, like he had taken most of them in his life. He would always have his bottle to turn to, afterwards.

Only two blows had completely swept the ground from under his feet. Killing his wife - neither the ambrosia nor seeking forgiveness from the Ellen who appeared in Caprica Six could really alleviate that pain. Whether or not Ellen ever forgave him, he would never forgive himself. And the second blow had been so profound that even reaching for the bottle seemed pointless. He wasn't even sure he wanted it any more. It wasn't that he had discovered that he was the very thing he hated so fervently, but that in being what he was, he had betrayed and almost broken his best and oldest friend.

Almost. Bill had always been strong, stronger than him. But he didn't imagine that he would find forgiveness, and it didn't really matter, because again, he would never forgive himself. He would always hate himself for this. He had never compromised, never cut anyone any slack - he certainly wouldn't for himself.

But he had never flinched away from things that needed facing, either - even if he did seek temporary refuge in a bottle, he would face everything in the end. There was Caprica, whom he hadn't visited only for Ellen, but also to learn what it was to be a Cylon - and there was the undeniable fact that he was a Cylon. She - he couldn't bring himself to think of her as an _it_ any more - came up behind him, touched him.

_What are you gonna do with that woman?_

She was pregnant.

And then there was Earth.

Well, it seemed like a fitting punishment to him.

**Dee**

I disavowed my father, my family, my heritage for the feeling of belonging to something greater in the Colonial Fleet. I left my world, its customs and its people, and I felt that I had a right to do it.

Even the end of the worlds didn't disillusion me, I clung to my naïve ideals, leaned on them and kept myself upright. And I learned to cling to the ideals of humanity and Earth. I believed in them. A Sagittaron, even one who has disowned her world, makes a good believer.

And I clung to Lee. Anger and disappointment gave me the strength to leave him, but it was still much harder for me than it was for him, I know.

So what's left now?

No ideals, nothing to cling to, to lean on. How can I feel like I belong to something greater - the Colonial Fleet, humanity - if none of us belong anywhere? Every home we've ever had has been destroyed. We're all floating, rootless, aimless.

I've never felt so alone, or so cold. No comfort.

_Hear my prayer, Gaia, Mother Earth, and embrace all your children with comfort and understanding..._

The cold and desolate wind of Earth whispers the traditional Sagittaron folk prayer and brings tears to my eyes.

Perhaps I was wrong to cut all ties to my heritage, to the home I didn't even realise I loved until it was taken away from me forever.

But would they forgive an errant child who left without a backward glance if she returned, righteousness replaced by regret?

I don't know. And I don't know whether I can lean on the memory of my lost home or whether it'll just dissolve like the ghost that it is.

But right now, that's all there is. Right now, it will suffice.

**Leoben**

Every hope for a home for Cylons and humans together, destroyed.

It was my journey as much as Kara's. It was my faith as much as hers.

And it's my failure, my despair, just at it is hers.

_This is not all that we are._

But what if it is?

**Kara**

_You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace. You will lead them all to their end._

She had fought against those words, even if she couldn't completely erase them from her mind, fought like she always did, without care for anything or anyone, including herself, and without any thought of surrender. And the memory of the first sight of Earth from her Viper - still so clear, in her mind - had lent her even more strength.

Now, for the first time, she began to think that those words might be true.

* * *

Children of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, humans, and children of humanity, Cylons...

Stare at Earth, united, for the first time, in your despair.

Hold hands, lean on one another, seek comfort in offering it, offer comfort in seeking it.

_Remember your self-esteem, your self-respect, and your self-worth. Hold strong to them._

Remind yourselves that despite everything - your losses, your failures, your despair - you are still alive. Talk, cry, hug, fight, get drunk. Share your pleasure and pain alike in mingled breaths, feverish touches, moans escaping your lips. Whatever it takes, for you need to keep on living.

_Despite all we've lost, we keep trying, and we will get through this - all of us, together. I promise._

Shed your cloaks of responsibility just for once, forget the promises that now sound like lies and beliefs that now seem like taunts and even cancer, and feel only your love, even if it is deep enough to be painful.

Love without reservation, even if you suspect, even if you _know_ that the one you love is a Cylon. Your heart knows, even if your mind doesn't, that it really makes no difference.

Kiss your children, sit with friends and let silence say everything that needs to be said, pray - to one god or to many.

Whatever it takes.

Remember that you're still standing.

Remember to live.

_All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again._


End file.
